%% Image removed per Image Pickin' thread: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1364293500055087400%% Please see thread to discuss a new image.%%-> '''Trinity:''' My name is Trinity.\\'''Neo:''' Trinity. ''The'' Trinity? That cracked the IRS d.base? Jesus.\\'''Trinity:''' What?\\'''Neo:''' I just thought, um... you were a guy.\\'''Trinity:''' Most guys do.-->--''Film/TheMatrix''

The Cops are hot on the trail of a hacker who is [[TheCracker bringing down banks, shutting off traffic lights, and just generally causing mayhem]].

They are given a list of possible suspects, all of whom happen to be men. After either narrowing down the list to one or two suspects, or dismissing all the suspects completely, the hero or his sidekick stumbles onto a startling revelation. The Hacker is a woman.

In the minds of all officers of the law and FBI agents (even female ones), hackers are exclusively male, and having a second X chromosome excludes you from any suspicion for anything having to do with computers or technology in general. When the truth is revealed, the notion that nobody previously thought a woman was capable of such things is either tossed aside, or even ignored altogether.

This trope only counts when everyone thinks it's a boy and it's later revealed the hacker is a female. It is not a list of generalized female hackers.

This is a sub-trope of SamusIsAGirl and happens to be the techie sister of the WrenchWench. Related to the common myth that ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet.

Not to be confused with female ''hacks'', AKA journalists -- for them, see HotScoop.

----!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': Everyone thinks Radical Edward is a boy, [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer even after meeting her]]. Imagine the shock when her father shows up and gives his "baby girl" a hug! Then again, her father also forgets that she's a girl. * ''PrincessLover'': Teppei is surprised to learn that his maid, Yuu Fujikura, heads an entire team of hackers (all maids, like herself). It even becomes a pivotal plot point, late in the series, when she spearheads a cyberspace counter-offensensive to regain control of the Arima Building from a group of terrorists, while simultaneously helping to disarm several remote detonated charges planted throughout the building.* ''Anime/BubblegumCrisis'': Nene Romanova fills this role. It becomes a plot point when Nene uses her hardsuit to hack into the AD Police mainframe (unbeknownst to her fellow officers) to regain control of the building from a terrorist and his team of rogue boomers. While, at the same time, guiding the police chief's niece to safety via the intercom.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]* In ''Film/Cube2Hypercube'', the superhacker Alex Trusk turns out to be [[spoiler:Sasha. Her name is the Russian diminutive of Alexander/Alexandra.]]* ''Film/{{Hackers}}''. Acid Burn was an alpha hacker so she had a coterie of boyhackers who thought she was awesome, but Crash Override was surprised to discover she was a girl. Dade keeps trying to get her to go out with him, but she forces him to prove that he's a better hacker before she does. [[spoiler:In the end, after their date, he finally tells her that she's elite. She tells him that this is all he had to do to get her to go out with him instead of trying to go the normal route]].* ''Film/TheMatrix'': When Neo first meets Trinity, he's surprised and a little embarrassed to learn that Trinity is female (see the page quote).* ''[[Film/TheFastAndTheFurious Furious 7]]'' goes this route in all its implications [[spoiler: [[SamusIsAGirl with Ramsey]], the hacker that needs to be rescued from a terrorist organization by Dom and crew]].[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]* Lisbeth Salander from ''TheMillenniumTrilogy'' uses this to help her hide from the police.** In a nod to ''Film/TheMatrix'', there's an actual hacker character known as Trinity in the third book. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a guy.* In ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' books, cybreakers (hackers with multiple brain implants that allow them to hack ''with their minds'') and mnemonics (essentially, "white hat" cybreakers) are just as likely to be women as men, since they were originally trained by {{Mega Corp}}s who kidnapped children of both sexes to implant and train them. However, as a rule, there are more female mnemonics than cybreakers.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]* Dr. K from ''Power Rangers RPM'' combines Hackette with MultidisciplinaryScientist.* Claudia, when she is hacking into the Warehouse in the first few episodes of ''{{Warehouse 13}}'', is spoken of with male pronouns until they learn her identity.* Penelope Garcia from ''Series/CriminalMinds'' is happy to surprise supervisors and people from other precincts with the fact she's a female.** Penelope talking in Criminal Minds S1 E22: "The Information Superhighway is closed. Someone had the nerve to run a black-hat op into my computers, Morgan. They hacked me, okay? But you can bet your sweet ass that I will find them. I've got honeypot farms hidden behind UML kernel data packets and a first-generation honey net I personally programmed. My snort-log lists every visitor, every server request, every keystroke of this entire network. If I have to back-hack his IP all the way to the frickin' stone-age I will find this sonofabitch, K? So bye!"* Cameron Howe from ''Series/HaltandCatchFire''. She is a hot shot computer wiz that drops out of school to work for Cardiff Electric on their PC. She writes the BIOS code and comes up with and develops the interactive OS idea. Gordon's wife Donna Clark, a programmer herself, once calls her code "elegant, like music". [[spoiler: She lives up to her name in one episode, where she hacks into a bank and steals money for Cardiff Electric on John Bosworth's orders. He later takes the fall for it when the FBI raids Cardiff Electric. His lawyer pays his bail almost immediately, though.]]** Donna Clark also fits the bill, albeit to a lesser extent. * ''TheLoneGunmen'' has a female hacker whose real name was never revealed, but she went by Yves Adel Harlow most of the time. All her aliases were anagrams of Lee Harvey Oswald.* An episode of ''Series/BurnNotice'' featured a girl hacker. Not only was the fact that she was an attractive teenage girl a surprise, but she also turned out to be utterly vicious and cold-blooded, as evidenced when she drugs Michael and then ties him to a chair and rubber-bands a plastic bag over his head in an attempt to kill him via asphyxiation (luckily, Michael manages to talk his way out of it).* Root in ''Series/PersonOfInterest''.* In ''WhiteCollar'' episode "Taking Account" Peter arranges a meeting with a hacker known as Vulture. He tries scoping out the men in the area, but it's Mozzie who realizes the Vulture is a woman. * In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode ''The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo'', the hacker that Dick Roman uses to crack a hard-drive is Charlie Bradbury... a woman, and the titular "girl".* Mac, whose real name is Cindy Mackenzie on ''Series/VeronicaMars'' is a computer hacker who helps Veronica with mystery cases. * Dutch Velders in ''Series/TheStrain''.* ''Series/NewTricks'' played this to the hilt twice within a few years.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' sourcebook "Paranormal Animals of North America" creature descriptions are discussed in comments made by shadowrunners and other more or less knowledgeable types. On of the more sensible and well-informed commenters is known as "Doc". Near the end of the book, Doc mentions being about to submit a description of a new species named ''(genus) amandae''. Why "Amanda?" the other commenters cluelessly ask. Because that's my name, Doc replies. Apart from the unusual decision to use her first name instead of her surname to name the species, the commenters really oughtn't have been ''that'' surprised, since female hackers/shadowrunners are common in the 2050 of the game, and a fair share of the previous commenters have very obviously been female.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]* Miho from ''Webcomic/{{Megatokyo}}'' caused a massive crash of the ''Endgames'' MMORPG servers and asks Piro if he was surprised to learn the aforementioned hacker was a girl.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]* This is TruthInTelevision for most female programmers and computer technicians (whether they fit the general usage of "hacker" or not), since it's a very male dominated profession.[[/folder]]